Install Problems

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Install Problems
started by: johnc2k

Posted by johnc2k on Jan. 24 2007,02:55

Hi Guys,

Im trying to install DSL on my Sony Vaio PCG-C1XN but am having some problems.

First heres the quick spec on my laptop:

Celeron 266
64mb RAM
40GB HD
No Builtin CDRom
No Builtin Floppy
No Builtin NiC
Can not boot from USB

So as you can probably guess its a bit of a challenge!

The laptop can boot a Floppy Disk from a Sony USB Floppy Drive, and I have a bootdisk for a PCMCIA CDRom Drive.

Anyway this is what I have done so far...

Ive used a Win98 Boot disk to format the Hard Disk, and then used a modifed boot disk to load the drivers for my PCMCIA CDRom Drive and managed to copy the CD Contents to my hard disk.

I then tried the DSL Floppy Disk hoping I could do a 'poor mans' install, but It doesnt detect anything on the hard drive and I just get a disk error with whatever commands I try.

So I modified my boot disk further by adding loadlin.exe and the options.txt from the "Loadlin_Install" from the wiki page.
I copied these files into c:\boot\isolinux\ and ran 'loadlin @options.txt' and I get the following output:

Quote

Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:00.

Now after reading a bit on google, this appears to be a error with loading into RAM; but now I dont have a clue what to do.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks

John

Posted by roberts on Jan. 24 2007,03:01

How about trying to boot from Sony pcmcia cdrom drive?
Usually you can boot from Sony pcmcia cdrom drive with these options:

boot: dsl ide2=0x180, 0x386 pci=off

You might also need to use vga=normal or perhps a vga code you can see by pressing f3 at the first boot prompt

Posted by johnc2k on Jan. 24 2007,03:39

Ive just got 1 giant step closer!
I wasn't happy with the DSL Boot Disk errors I was getting, so I managed to scavange a new floppy disk and created a new DSL Boot Disk and managed to boot into DSL

w00t!

But...

I tried the 'install to HD', it had a error and disappeared before I could see it, I rebooted thinking I knew what was going to happen and... yes my thoughts were correct, its wiped the HD and ive lost the files, thus im no longer able to boot into DSL

dang.

I tried what you suggested Robert but it doesnt boot from the CD, thoe DSL did detect the PCMCIA CDRom drive when it started up (before I killed it) which im really surprised about.
I tried the command to boot from a PCMCIA CDRom (dsl frompcmcia or whatever it is) and that made no difference... hmmm... any suggestions on how I should setup my disk?

Posted by roberts on Jan. 25 2007,22:50

Is your hard drive still dos/fat based?
If so, try to copy the knoppix folder from cdrom to c:\

So you should have c:\knoppix\knoppix

Then download and make DSL boot floppy and try to boot from that floppy in your bootable usb floppy drive.